The Gasket Guide – Introduction

While we definitely wouldn’t want to claim to be experts in the field of running a commercial photographic gallery, with our second exhibition under our belt we have learnt a few lessons which we thought it might be worth sharing. As we also want to work with a broad range of photographers and artists, many of whom may not have exhibited commercially before, we felt that having a body of information we could refer them to might be helpful and insightful for them.

And so started The Gasket Guide, a series of blog posts covering a range of topics related to exhibiting photographic work commercially. While we will try to keep the Guide as factual as possible, it should also be recognised that essentially it contains our opinions and expectations when exhibiting work. Where we outline a Gasket specific view on how to do certain things, we will try to include links to other opinions on the topic, so you can see the whole debate.

If you are an artist working with us, the Guide should give you a solid understanding of how we operate, what we expect from you and how we have chosen to deal with the many vagaries of exhibiting work. If there are any points which you have concerns about, please do let us know as we are more than happy to be flexible on most points.

Here are the topics the Guide will cover eventually;

Pricing – How pricing works, Artist Price vs Sale Price, what needs to be included etc.

Editions – What is editioning? The importance of editions, artists proofs etc.

Loan Agreements – What information should be provided, why do we ask for a loan agreement?

Artist’s Statement & Biography – What to include, how long should they be, what format etc.

Certification of Work – What information needs to be provided, what are you signing up to?

Naming of Work/Identification of Work/ Cataloging – Making sure individual works can easily be recognised, number/cataloguing, the difficulty with using “untitled” as a name in regard to identifying works.

We’ll be adding the various sections as they’re written, hopefully we’ll also be able to get a few experts’ views on some of the topics to add to the discussion. If you have any suggestions on further topics to cover, or questions about any of the topics, please don’t hesitate to contact us at info@gasket-gallery.com or on twitter and we’ll try to address anything we can through updates!